I'm working the Cubs D'backs game in Phoenix today. The game is 5pm eastern on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD. I shot some desert footage a week ago and we're going to use a shot today for billboards.

The 3rd billboard will be a shot of a cactus panning down to a wide shot with the cactus framed right. Not sure exactly where in the show the 3rd billboard will be.

The truck can't take HD analog component into the system, so we had to input SD analog component and upconvert it- but the footage still looks pretty good. For those of you watching in HD, you'll notice the other scenics are 4:3 with blur bars on the sides and my shot will be 16x9.

FWIW, we used some backgrounds for the NIGHTLINE show that were shot in the Z1, HD mode. We downsampled in Vegas rather than at capture or the source.
We're starting to see Z1 footage pop up all over. NASCAR shooters used Z1's at a race in Dallas last week, and it's staying HD all the way through, from what I'm told.

But I can't seem to part with $1,500. All of the HD trucks I've been on so far can only take HD SDI. Nobody has a frame sync or upconverter or cross converter or anything that inputs HD analog component. Except of course monitors. The producers can't ever understand why they can't put the footage on the air, when I can show it to them on the monitors.

Has anyone seen a cheaper 10bit HD analog SD to HD SDI converter ?

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